AAR Singleplayer: Tattletale (red side)

[Anonymous]

1) Introduction:
Playing "Tattletale" was my first test of ANW 3.8.0. It too was the first time I used the ANW 2.0. The scen is a H4 scen, which means it is a digital rebuilt of the scen created for the miniature version of Harpoon.
I decided to play red side since I wanted to check out my chances against an American CVBG.

2) Technical setup:
Pentium 4 2,93 Ghz, 1 MB RAM
ANW 3.8.0
Database ANW 2.0

3) How it went:
The game starts at 04:00 on April 15th, 1989. I´ve got six subs and a Mod Kashin destroyer - the tattletale. I am to commence hostilities against the US CVBG at 05:25. Ok, time to setup my forces.

At 05:20 everything is ready: the Juliets are surfaxed so they can fire their cruise missiles, the Victor is flagship since the Tattletale will not survive for a long time - and then - your flagship sunken - communication is gone.

05:25 Suddenly all hell breaks loose. My Juliets and the Kashin fire, all subs are heading towards the CVBG.

05:30 The tattletale is gone - missile strike, as expected. Don´t know if the Juliet´s cruise misslies have performed well.

All around furious air battles arise. The Tomcats shoot down a lot of Floggers, but they have losses too...

07:00 Looks like the Libyan comrades have lost the air battle. Only few Floggers left.

08:00 Soviet Naval Aviation is on its way! Two dozen Blinder bombers attack Gioia de Colle with iron bombs. But they are slaughtered, coming in dumb.

08:15 Air attacks on Libyan bases start.

08:30 The Libyan SAG is attacked. It shares Kashin´s destiny.

12:30 My Charlie II SSGN is hit - 18% damage.

14:00 Libyan Floggers bail her out by downing several helos.

But where has the CVBG gone? [&:]

During the next hours it becomes clear that the CVBG is heading southbound, towards Libya. Contacts are weak, but the direction is clear.

21:00 My Charlie gets another torp hit and sinks. [:(]

23:18 The Foxtrot too is located, engaged and destroyed - where are the Backfires? [:@] There are 24 ac on the Soviet base but they do not launch. Seems they have no own recce birds and depend on my sub´s infos?

I´ve got now rather good fixes of the CVBG but only four subs left....The air battles have stopped; not only Libya has lost many ac I guess.

April, 16th, 1989

04:00 time over - game over.

Resume:
1) The scen runs under ANW 3.8.0 without any problems or crashes. Maximum time compression on my PC is 1:60.

2) Maybe red should be able to control at least the Soviet bomber regiments. The computer-controlled Blinders were slaughtered and the remaining 24 ac on ground (Backfires?) never launched.

3) I think red should have a few recce birds, at least for the computer-controlled Soviet Naval Aviation.

All in all a tough one playing red side.

Faced no ANW or database problems: my first impression of ANE 3.8.0 is good.

Ralf

[Anonymous]

[Deleted by Admins]

[Anonymous]

Dale,

gave it a second try. This time I sent all subs to the South and had acceptable contacts right on the first day at 13:00. [:D]

At 14:39, when I klicked on Bainbridge, I got the status "Probable Kill", but it didn´t make sense because she seemed to be moving with the group. [&:]

At 19:53 the Libyan Fotrot was attacked, but escaped.

At 23:00 new air attacks against Libya started. Looked like they all concentrated on Benina Air Base.

Around midnight the Blinders attacked Gioia del Colle a second time and shut it down. [:)]

Since 02:00 I had firm contacts on Tico and JFK, but no Backfires launched from their Black Sea Base.

All my subs closed in.

At 03:30 the Charlie II fired - from about 35 nm - its SSMs against JFK, but they were downed. [:(]

At the same time the Victor I was amidst the CVBG - in between JFK, Bainbridge and Tico! Distance no more than three miles and I even went active with it! [:D]

The devastating message when I tried to allocate torps:
.."No weapon capable" [:@] I changed the subs depth and speed in all variations but it simply refused to fire its torpedoes.

[:@]

Sad thing. And why did the Backfires still not launch? I had extremely firm contacts.

[&:]

Database and/or game issues?

[Anonymous]

[Deleted by Admins]

[Anonymous]

Hello,

think I should summarize my testing of this scen and the hints I gave to Dale:

1) Sub loadouts
Some of the Soviet subs only have anti-sub torpedoes in their mounts and magazines. Thus they cannot shoot at the Nato surface vessels. Easy to fix: Just change loadouts in scenedit.

2) Blinder bombers do not attack Nato CVBG despite there are exact contacts made by the red subs
The problem seems to be a problem I call "reload freeze": The bombers just don´t go to status "ready". After their ready time is over, they remain at 0:00 - but don´t get ready and thus do not launch. It worked when I manually refixed loadout times in scenedit and tried again. But when I added a Fulcrum regiment to the Soviet base, this - once again - never reached status "ready".

Dale is looking for that; seems to be an database issue.

3) After playing for some time, game performance drastically decreased because of ever increasing uncertainty zones in the west. The whole western part of the map went red with polygon lines crawling like spiders.

My PC nearly crashed, mouse was down. Hardly made it to leave ANW without PC reboot.

Info given to Dale, maybe an ANW issue.

The scen itself is really nice, I love it. In my eyes worth to made separate Nato, USSR and MP versions out of it.

Thanks for the feedback to my hints, Dale!

Ralf

[TheOriginalOverlord]

Tried this one tonight as the USSR and won. Got my DDG in close like 3nm from JFK and 2nm from Tico (literally in the US formation) and at the correct time I unleashed all 4 Styx at the JFK and turned both 76mm mounts on the Tico while turning the fwd SAN-1 against the Bainbridge and the aft launcher on the Leahy

Two of the Styx got through and hit the JFK while the 76's were working Tico over pretty good. Meanwhile I had 4 Harpoons launched against me but 3 tracked on the Tico and only 1 locked on me which I shot down. Tico got two of them but one hit her. Meanwhile my DDG is starting to take hits from SeaSparrow (on the JFK) and SM2s...some gunfire I think as well....

My 30mms seem to be taking out a few of the inbounds but the AK-630s reload painfully slow. So slow they never reloaded ANY rounds. I switched one 76mm mount to the JFK and left the other on the Tico....soon JFK was taking 76mm hits....

My SAMs werent making it through the cruisers defence so I paired both launchers on the Spruance and with each mount on the same target and two inbound SAMs, Spruance took two hits...
So I started alternating each crusier with a pair of SAMs from both launchers...I could usually get 1 to hit sometimes both...

In the end I finally was sunk by the combined gunfire of all the ships but I emptied my SAMs and got ~2hits on the Spru, ~ 3 on the Bainbridge and ~4 on the Leahy. Plus 76mm hits on several of them...

Tico and JFK were in bad shape and burning badly... when my DDG went under.

Not long after I got the Victory window. I didn't write down expenditures but the JFK and Tico were lost along with the Leahy about 50%, Bainbridge and Spru at about 30% or so damaged each...

I lived alot longer than I thought I would but I'm not sure how close the DDG would have been allowed to get in real life.

Great Scen...going back to try it as US.....

[Anonymous]

Hello,

ORIGINAL: Overlord

Tried this one tonight as the USSR and won. (...)
Tico and JFK were in bad shape and burning badly... when my DDG went under.

Not long after I got the Victory window. I didn't write down expenditures but the JFK and Tico were lost along with the Leahy about 50%, Bainbridge and Spru at about 30% or so damaged each...

[&o] Most impressing ! So you slaughtered the whole CVBG with one destroyer. That one - designated Tattletale - should get a new name: "Terminator".

I agree that the destroyer is too close; the Navy probably would not have allowed that one - an SSM armed red vessel so close to a carrier.

[BurntFingers]

I just ran the Mod Kashin along the port side of the CVN for 5:24:55. Then opened up on the control tower and the steam catapults with the 30mm rotary cannon.

Styx - fired them at the VLS Tico and the CVN Bainbridge. The Leahy could see what I was up to, the other vessels could not.

Spent 10 minutes alongside the CVN. Even fired all my chaff and flares over it. Plenty of time for boarding party to engage. Magazines ran dry for the Goa (which is all I could use to engage the Leahy). Much of the fire aimed at me actually hit the Kennedy (radar profile covered my own, plus it was covered in chaff). Good old fashioned gunfire did for the Kashin in the end.

The Styx Arm did for the Aegis sytems (the parts of the array facing the Juliet SSGs) and when they surfaced and launched it was game over. The Kennedy, Bainbridge and Leahy were sunk, the Tico was badly compromised and I believe the Libyan Surface force managed to set an SSM into it.

Who needs Backfires?

[Anonymous]

Hello,

another one killing a whole CVBG with a ship usually meant as canon fodder. [&o]

ORIGINAL: BurntFingers

I just ran the Mod Kashin along the port side of the CVN for 5:24:55. Then opened up on the control tower and the steam catapults with the 30mm rotary cannon.

Styx - fired them at the VLS Tico and the CVN Bainbridge. The Leahy could see what I was up to, the other vessels could not.

Spent 10 minutes alongside the CVN. Even fired all my chaff and flares over it. Plenty of time for boarding party to engage. Magazines ran dry for the Goa (which is all I could use to engage the Leahy). Much of the fire aimed at me actually hit the Kennedy (radar profile covered my own, plus it was covered in chaff). Good old fashioned gunfire did for the Kashin in the end.

The Styx Arm did for the Aegis sytems (the parts of the array facing the Juliet SSGs) and when they surfaced and launched it was game over. The Kennedy, Bainbridge and Leahy were sunk, the Tico was badly compromised and I believe the Libyan Surface force managed to set an SSM into it.

Who needs Backfires?

Yes, in that set up you don´t need Backfires. [;)]

One can only hope that the Admiral leading this incompetent CVBG staff sunk with his carrier - a court-martial was waiting for him. [;)]

So how was this Tattletale-role of the Kashin DDGs meant back in the Cold War? And - more important - how close would an US Admiral come a cruise missile armed Soviet vessel to his CVGB?

I cannot believe that this setup would have been possible. [&:]

Ralf

[CV32]

ORIGINAL: koelbach
So how was this Tattletale-role of the Kashin DDGs meant back in the Cold War? And - more important - how close would an US Admiral come a cruise missile armed Soviet vessel to his CVGB? I cannot believe that this setup would have been possible. [&:]
Ralf

How about this close ? [:)]

[BurntFingers]

Rules of engagement were changed after USS Sark was hit by an Iraqi Exocet.

As the scenario takes place before this change and as it is the effect of a complete Surprise Attack, it's not as unlikely as you might think.

Fairly unlikely though.

EDIT:

Did a couple of grabs; the first shows the Kashin passing in line to the US group (presumably after having radioed for permission); at this point in time, a total loss of power and rudder would have been simulated (big cloud of smoke, Russian squawks on the radio) to get into the tradtitional boarding position, off the stern and to port (because Naval commanders traditionally stand on the starboard quarterdeck). This is also a very handy position for blindsiding a modern carrier;-

[img=http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/8452/beforewy4.th.png]

The next image shows a grab taken a couple of minutes later, after the declaration of war, and after about 30 shots had been fired by the US escorts. Only one hit on the Kashin so far (presumably the CV took the others as it has a much larger radar profile);-

[img=http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/9611/afterpr7.th.png]